Little Fish II

So I was sitting down to lunch today with some friends at the Whitehead Institute cafeteria (reviewed here).

Initially, a friend had mentioned the cafeteria as a good spot to get a cheap hamburger.

Indeed, the $6.50 Chang burger (Bacon, BBQ sauce, cheese, onion ring) combo meal was well worth the money.

A friend from my grad program came with us, and somehow during the course of our conversation he mentioned that while he was doing his undergrad at Harvard, his dorm had a personal chef who would cook eggs to order for them.

"You went to Harvard?" My other friend asked.

"Of course, you didn't notice his veritas ring he was trying to flaunt to you as he sampled your fry sauce?" I asked.

"Yeah, I was feeling a little overwhelmed and insecure about myself after the first few classes and am not looking forward to doing homework all weekend, so I put this ring on to give me confidence," said my Harvard-grad friend.

This, of course, turned into an in-depth intellectual inquisition into the theory of stuff we don't know that we know that we don't know. But that's material for another blog that isn't about small fishes.

But it was somehow comforting to know that I wasn't the only small fish in the pond. And incentive for me to try to come up with a material reminder for me to wear or carry around when I need a little confidence boost. I'm not sure a CTR ring would do it...

And then my friend made an insightful observation. In undergraduate, the smart kids were the ones who were either

• talented and naturally smart,
or
• extra hard-working

Somehow, they about evened out. The smart kids in the class were the ones who were born smart, or the ones who were of average intelligence and worked extra hard.

The problem with living in the big pond is that in order to be smart, you have to be naturally talented, and work extra hard. Shoot.

And then I went back to my Randomized Algorithms class just for fun. Because even though the homework will kill me, I still think the topic is interesting. And I am secretly hoping to try to swim with the big fish until after the first homework assignment, at which point I will disappears suddenly.

In his research, the instructor, David Karger, is working on an application to increase accessibility and usability of class notes called "nb" where the class notes are posted online and students can annotate the notes and receive feedback from other users or the teacher or whoever reads the notes next. This sounds like an interesting idea. Of course because it is his research project, Dr. Karger lauded it highly. Then he mentioned why it was seeing so much success: Because when students saw that other people weren't understanding the course material, they weren't afraid to ask questions, so everyone in the class had a better learning experience.

I thought that was interesting. I guess it's a common problem for people to remain silent if they don't understand something, and eventually they end up feeling like a little fish.

So I guess I'm still a little fish. But at least there are other little fish here with me.